GOP Rep. says working mothers should have stayed at home

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) opined at a campaign stop recently about how things were better in the olden days when women stayed at home taking care of the kids instead of going to work.

According to the Washington Post, Bartlett broached that topic while talking with the owner of a local automotive company about the problems facing two-income families. Unconcerned with the reporter standing by him, Bartlett implied that the problem only exists because society had pushed women out of their homes and into the labor force.

“This isn’t the politically correct thing to say, but when we drove the mother out of the home into the workplace and replaced her with the television set, that was not a good thing,” Bartlett said, according to the Post.

The 86-year-old Bartlett has served in the House for two decades. A founding member of the Tea Party caucus, he’s now facing the toughest challenge of his congressional career.

Bartlett hasn’t made things easy on himself either, as he’s issued a number of puzzling or controversial statements in the past year. Last month, Bartlett linked student loans to Nazi Germany, then quickly offered an apology while defending the broader gist of that comment. Earlier in the year, he urged families to move out of cities lest they be swept up in riotous civil unrest. He also (maybe satirically) introduced a bill to grant tax breaks to people with mustaches, like himself.

About the Author

Jon Terbush is a Boston-based writer whose work has appeared in Talking Points Memo, Business Insider, the New Haven Register, and elsewhere. He tweets about politics, cats, and baseball via @jonterbush.